“They do when Sylvia is on the loose!” yelled Vera, limping to where we were. “She wanted Billie’s red cart—and shoved her so she fell down the stairs. I was in the bathtub. I heard the screams.”
“Then how do you know it was Sylvia?” I yelled. “Can you see through walls, Vera?”
In the foyer, Papa knelt beside Billie’s still form and tenderly took her into his arms. Her dark head lolled backward, much in the way Sylvia’s did. “I was having artificial legs made,” he said in a flat way. “She told me she couldn’t ever use them to walk, but I thought she could have pretty legs just for showing off when I took her into town. They would have fit over the stumps and looked good. Then she wouldn’t have had to wear all those long, hot dresses to … oh, oh, oh …” He sobbed. Carefully he put Billie back on the floor, and then he jumped to his feet and made a grab to seize Sylvia. “Damn you!” he screamed as he came at me to get to her.
I shoved Sylvia behind me and heard her whimper of fright. “Wait a minute, Papa. Sylvia was with me all the time. We went down to the river, and when we came back, Billie was dead on the floor.”
“But Vera just said—” he shouted, then stopped, looking from me to Vera.
“You know what Vera is, Papa. She lies.”
“I did not lie!” yelled Vera, her pale face very white, her apricot hair flaming like wildfire. “I heard Billie yelling at Sylvia, and then I heard Billie scream. Audrina is the liar!”
Papa’s eyes narrowed as he tried to guess who was telling the truth. “All right, both of you tell different tales.” He sniffled and wiped away his tears, shrugged and turned so he couldn’t see Billie. “I know for a fact that Vera is a liar, and I also know that Audrina would do anything to protect Sylvia. Regardless of how Billie died … I cannot bear to look at Sylvia now. I am going to have her put away so she can never harm anyone else.”
“No!” I screamed, pulling Sylvia into my arms and holding her protectively. “If you put Sylvia away, then send me with her! Whatever happened, it was an accident.”
His hard eyes became slits. “Then Sylvia was not with you all the time?”
Something came to me then and lifted a burden from my heart. “Papa, Sylvia would never go near Billie. She refused to let Billie touch her, and never would she willingly touch Billie, even to get her cart. Her way was to sneak Billie’s cart from her when Billie wasn’t looking.”
“I don’t believe you,” said Papa, looking at Sylvia with loathing. “I only hope for your sake that the police will. Two deaths from falls down the same stairs is going to be rather difficult to explain.”
It was Papa who called the police, and by the time they arrived, we’d all gained some control of our emotions. With Billie photographed a dozen times first, the police ambulance drove her away.
Pacing before the ornate fireplace covered by tooled leather, Papa made a formidable, impressive opponent for the detective who came with the same two policemen who’d investigated my aunt’s death. He told his story straight.
Then it was Vera’s turn. I marveled at how protective she was of Sylvia, never mentioning the shouts or the screams she’d heard. “I was taking a bath, shampooing, doing my nails, and when I came out I heard my cousin down in the foyer crying. When I went down, I saw Mrs. Lowe at the bottom of the steps.”
“Wait a minute, miss. You are not Mrs. Lowe’s sister?”
“We were raised as sisters in this house, but we are really first cousins.”
Papa scowled darkly but at the same time seemed to breathe a sigh of relief.
It was then my turn to repeat what I knew. I weighed each word I said carefully, doing my utmost to shield Sylvia, who crouched in a distant corner with her head hanging so low her long hair completely concealed her face. She seemed like a small puppy cowering in the corner after misbehaving.
“My mother-in-law had a way of lowering herself down the stairs one step at a time. As she went, she’d take the cart with her, putting it on the next lower step first. She went up the stairs in the same way. Her arms were very strong. She had a splinter in one finger. She must have put too much weight on that hand and lost her balance and fell. I can’t be positive, for I wasn’t there. I had taken my sister Sylvia down to the river with me.”
“The two of you stayed together all the time?”
“Yes, sir, all the time.”
“And when the two of you came back, you found your mother-in-law dead on the floor?”
“No, sir. Soon after we came in the door, before I had the chance to light the lamps, I heard her falling down, and the cart, too.”
Vera was watching the younger policeman, about thirty, who kept staring at her. Oh, my God! She was flirting with him, crossing and uncrossing her legs, fiddling with the neckline of her half-open robe. The older policeman didn’t seem nearly as interested but rather disgusted. “Then that means, Miss Whitefern,” he said quietly, “that you were the only one in the house when Mrs. Lowe, senior, fell.”
“I was taking a bath,” repeated Vera, throwing me a hard glare. “I sunbathed this morning, and that made me feel hot and sticky. I came inside to wash my hair, and, as I always do, I soaked and did my nails. Did my toenails, too,” she said. She thrust forth her expertly manicured nails. Her gleaming toenails peeked through her sandals. “If I had struggled with Mrs. Lowe, I would have smeared my nail polish.”
“How long does it take for nail polish to dry?”
He asked me this, not Vera.
“It all depends.” I tried to remember. “One coat dries in a hurry, but the more coats you use the longer it takes to dry. I try to be careful with my nails for at least thirty minutes after the last coat.”
“Exactly!” said Vera, looking at me gratefully. “And if you know anything at all about nails you can see I put on five coats, counting the base coat and the top sealing coat.”
The policemen seemed lost in the complexity of feminine toiletry.
In the end, it was decided our front stairs were highly dangerous to everyone, especially after they were examined and a loose place in the carpeting was found. “Easily that could have tripped her up,” said the younger officer.
I stared down at the red carpeting, trying to remember how that could have happened when our house had been refurbished from top to bottom and new carpet had been laid on the stairs. How could a woman with no legs trip, anyway? Unless somehow she’d started to move her hand and it had snagged beneath the loose place, or her clothes had caught on something … or a prism was flashed in her eyes to blind her. But the hall had been dark after the sun went away.
Maybe we all looked too grief-stricken to be murderers, or Papa had strings he pulled, for again another death at Whitefern was called accidental.
I was uneasy in Sylvia’s presence now. She hadn’t liked Aunt Ellsbeth, either. I began to watch her covertly, again realizing, but with more impact, that Sylvia resented anyone who might be a threat to her place in my heart. It was in her eyes, in her every reaction, that I was the only one who mattered in her life, and to me she was going to cling. I had done that to her myself—with a little urging from Papa.
The day of Billie’s funeral I was deathly sick with the worst cold of my life. Feverish and depressed, I lay on my bed as Vera tended me, seeming happy to show off her professional skills. Tossing and turning, burning with fever, I hardly heard her when she spoke of how handsome Arden had become. “Of course, he was always good-looking, but when he was a boy I thought him weak. He seems to have taken on a little of Papa’s strength and personality … have you noticed?”
What she said was true. Arden was as ambivalent about my father as I was; he loathed him and admired him. And, bit by bit, he was picking up Papa’s mannerisms, his walk, his firm, resolute way of talking.
Dreamlike, I saw Billie behind my eyes sitting at the cottage window, passing goodies out to Arden and me when we were children. I saw her as she’d looked the last week of her life, radiant with happiness because she was in love
. But why had Billie tried to use the front stairs when the back ones were so much closer to the kitchen? Just like Aunt Ellsbeth, who had also spent most of her days in the kitchen. Could it be that because the front stairs led straight down to the marble floor, without the sharp turns and carpeted landings of the back stairs, they were the only “deadly” stairs? Then that meant someone had deliberately pushed both my aunt and Billie.
I lived that day of Billie’s death over and over again, hearing her scream, then the clatter and thuds of both Billie and the cart crashing down the stairs.
“Stop crying!” ordered Vera harshly as she thrust a thermometer in my mouth. “Remember when my mother told you that tears never did any good. They don’t, never have, never will. You take from life what you want and don’t ask permission, or else you get nothing.”
As sick as I was I cringed from the harshness of her loud voice when there was no man around to hear her speak. She threw Sylvia, who was crouched in the corner, a malicious glance.
“I despise that little monster. Why didn’t you tell the truth to the police and rid yourself of her? She’s the one who killed my mother, just as she killed Billie.” She strode over to stand in front of Sylvia, making me shove up on my elbows to try to prevent what might happen next. “Get this, Sylvia,” shouted Vera, prodding Sylvia with her foot. “You are not going to sneak up behind me and shove me down the stairs, for I’ll be on my guard—and it’s not going to happen, understand?”
“Leave her alone, Vera.” My voice was weak, my vision fuzzy, but it seemed Sylvia was more terrified of Vera than Vera was of her … so terrified of Vera that she crawled under my bed and hid there until Papa and Arden came home.
Life went sour after Billie died. Perhaps because all of us (but Vera and Sylvia) missed her so much, perhaps because I was suffering a double loss now that I doubted and mistrusted Sylvia. I gave up on Sylvia and no longer bothered to try to teach her anything. Often when I turned suddenly I caught Sylvia staring at me wistfully, a yearning in her expression. It was not so much in her eyes as it was in her attitude as she tried to catch hold of my hand and tried to please me with wildflowers she brought in from the woods.
My cold lingered and lingered, keeping me coughing through most of the summer. I was nineteen still and looking forward to that birthday that would make me twenty. I’d feel safer then, with no nine to curse me. Life seemed too cruel, taking both my aunt and Billie in only one year. And Vera was still with us, taking over the household chores with a willingness that both surprised and pleased Papa.
I lost weight and began to neglect my appearance. My twentieth birthday came and went and the relief of escaping a year with a nine in it didn’t bring me happiness. I clung more to the shadows near the wall and eyed all colors with fear. I wished now my memory still had holes into which I could drop my anguish and my suspicions of Sylvia. But the Swiss cheese memory belonged to my childhood, and now I knew only too well how to hold on to that which grieved me.
Another autumn passed, another winter. There were nights when Arden didn’t come home at all, and I didn’t care.
“Here,” said Vera one spring day, near the anniversary of Billie’s death, “drink this hot tea and put some color in your cheeks. You look like death warmed over.”
“I like iced tea better,” I said, shoving the cup and saucer away. Angrily she shoved it back at me. “Drink the tea, Audrina. Stop behaving like a child. Didn’t you just say a few minutes ago you had a chill?”
Obediently, I picked up the cup and started to put it to my lips when Sylvia came running forward. She hurled her full weight against Vera, who fell forward and grabbed for me. In so doing she knocked the cup from my hand. It fell to the floor and broke and both Vera and I tipped over in the chair.
Screaming her rage, with pain twisting her face, Vera tried to punish Sylvia … but she’d sprained her ankle. “Oh, goddamn that moron! I’m going to talk to Papa about having her put away!”
Blinking my eyes and trying to pull myself back into focus, I picked myself up and out of habit pulled Sylvia into my arms. “No, Vera, not as long as I live will Sylvia be put away. Why don’t you leave? I’ll take over the housework and the cooking. We don’t need you any longer.”
She began to cry. “After all I’ve done to help you, and now you don’t want me.” She sobbed as if her heart were broken. “You’re spoiled, Audrina, spoiled. If you had a backbone at all you’d have left this place a long time ago.”
“I thank you for taking care of me, Vera, but from this day forward I’ll do for myself.”
One day in summer Arden came storming home from his office very early. He ran into our bedroom and yanked me from bed.
“Enough is enough!” he yelled. “I should have done this months ago! You cannot throw away your life and mine because you’re not mature enough to face facts. Death is all around us, from the moment we’re born we’re on our way to our graves. But think of it this way, Audrina,” he said as his voice softened and he pulled me into his embrace. “No one really ever dies. We are like the leaves of the trees; we bud out in the spring of our birth and fall off in the autumn of our lives, but we do come back. Just like the leaves of spring, we do live again.”
For the first time since that awful day Billie fell, I really saw my husband’s fatigue, the small lines etched around his tired, red-rimmed eyes. Eyes that had sunk deeper into his skull, like mine. He hadn’t shaved, and that lent him a raffish, out-of-character look, like a stranger I didn’t know and didn’t love. I saw faults in his face I’d never noticed before.
Pulling away, I fell back on the bed and just lay there. He came to kneel and bow his head on my breast, pleading for me to come back to him. “I love you, and day by day you are killing me. I lost my mother and my wife on the same day—and I still eat, still go to work, still carry on. But I can’t continue to live this kind of life—if this can be called living.”
Something in me cracked then. My arms slid around him and my fingers curled into his thick hair. “I love you, Arden. Don’t lose patience. Keep holding on and I’ll come your way … I know I will, for I want to.”
Almost crying, kissing me with a passion almost crazy, he finally drew away and smiled. “All right. I’m willing to wait—but not forever. Remember that.”
Soon he was in the bathroom showering and Sylvia had risen from her place in the corner to stand at the foot of my bed. Pitifully she tried to focus her eyes. Her small hands reached for me pleadingly, begging me to come back to her, too. She had changed. I hardly knew her.
At twelve years of age, Sylvia had developed almost overnight (or while I wasn’t looking) a woman’s figure. Someone had brushed her hair and tied it back in a ponytail with an aqua satin ribbon that matched the lovely outfit I’d never seen before. Totally surprised, I stared at her beautiful young face, her shapely young body that the form-fitting cotton dress revealed. What a fool I was to have suspected Sylvia could harm anyone. She needed me. How could I have forgotten Sylvia in my apathy?
I stared at Sylvia, who had moved to the dimmest corner and crouched with her knees pulled up so the crotch of her panties showed. Pull your dress down, I thought, and watched her obey without any sense of power or surprise. A long time ago Sylvia and I had developed a rapport between us.
Mothers and aunts could die, daughters and sons, too, yet life went on and the sun still shone, the rain still fell, and the months came and went. Papa began to show more definite signs of aging as he also showed faint signs of mellowing.
I knew that Arden was seeing a great deal of Vera away from Whitefern. Even under my own roof I often glimpsed them in some room that was seldom used. I closed my mind and my eyes and pretended I didn’t notice Arden’s flushed face and the way Vera had to smooth down her tight sheath dress that seemed painted on. She smiled at me smugly, mockingly, telling me she’d won. Why didn’t I care anymore?
Late one evening when I no longer expected to see Arden enter my room, he opened the door
and came in to sit on the edge of my bed. To my utter amazement, he began to tug off his shoes, then his socks. I started to say something sarcastic about Vera, who’d been bitchy all day, but I said nothing.
“In case you’re interested,” he said in a stiff way, “I’m not going to touch you. I’d just like to sleep in this room again and feel you near me before I make up my mind what to do with my life. I’m not happy, Audrina. I don’t think you’re happy, either. I want you to know I’ve talked to Damian, and your father no longer embezzles money from his dormant accounts. He’s honest now about old stock certificates that have great value. He was surprised I’d caught on and didn’t deny anything. All he said was, ‘I did it for a good cause.’”
He gave his information in an indifferent way, as if the words were spoken only to bridge the gap between us. Now that Arden was assistant vice president of my father’s firm, he’d stopped talking of someday returning to his first love, architecture. He put away his draftsman’s tools, the drawing table Billie had bought for him when he was sixteen, just as he put away the other dreams of his youth. I guess we all did the same thing. Fate dictated the paths we trod. Yet it hurt to see those things carried up into the attic, for so seldom did anything come back down.
I watched him put his creative ability away like something useless, and I felt disappointed to see he’d developed Papa’s craving for money, for power and then more money.
Though I tried time and time again to find concrete evidence that he was Vera’s lover, I guess I didn’t really want to know, or easily enough I could have caught them.
And time, once so fast, then so slow, speeded up again from the very monotony of everydayness, and I was twenty-two. Another spring and summer would soon disappear into the void I’d created for myself.
Just for something to occupy myself with, I seriously began cultivating the rose garden Momma had started long ago. I bought books on how to grow roses, and attended garden club meetings, taking Sylvia with me and introducing her for the first time to outsiders. Though she said little, no one thought her anything but shy. (Or at least they pretended to think that.) I dressed Sylvia in pretty clothes and styled her hair becomingly. She was always frightened and seemed relieved to come home again and put on her old garments.